The Art of Baseball: Flipping the switch

Maury Wills was in his eighth minor-league season, embedded at Class AAA Spokane in 1958 and heading toward career oblivion, when the Indians changed managers in midseason.

The new skipper, Bobby Bragan, took one look at Wills, saw how he bailed out against right-handed pitchers, saw at the same time how lightning-quick he busted up the line, and had a brainstorm that changed baseball history.

Here's how Bragan, now 88, remembers their subsequent conversation: "Maury, you're in a 7-½-year slump hitting right-handed. You have nothing to lose. How about becoming a switch-hitter?"

Here's how Wills, now 73, remembers the same conversation: "It was as if God put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Keep quiet and listen.' "

The conversion to switch-hitting does not always work as magically as it did for Wills, who was up with the Dodgers by the following season, a stolen-base champion by 1960, and a National League Most Valuable Player by 1962 after shattering Ty Cobb's stolen-base record with 104.

"It went far beyond extending my career," said Wills, who played for 14 seasons and become a borderline Hall of Fame candidate. "Switch-hitting gave me a career. If I hadn't met Bobby, I'd probably be picking strawberries somewhere."

For every Maury Wills, there are 50 young players who hit just as weakly from their new side as they did from their old.

For every Mickey Mantle there's Mickey Mantle Jr. — a switch-hitter, like his father, but never able to make it out of the low minors in the Yankees and Rangers organizations.

Batting champion Michael Young of Texas is among those who dabbled in switch-hitting throughout high school but gave it up as a freshman at UC-Santa Barbara.

Glenallen Hill tried switch-hitting for one Instructional League game, went 3 for 3 off tough right-hander Jose Rijo, then discovered — the hard way — that he couldn't avoid a pitch coming at his head when looking at it from the left-handed batter's box.

Frozen in fear that day, Hill was a right-handed hitter again the next day, and forever after.

Paul Blair, the Orioles' great-field, little-hit center fielder in the 1970s, tried to learn switch-hitting in the major leagues, a feat pulled off only by a few, including Don Kessinger and Tito Fuentes.

Blair did fine in spring training while the pitchers were fine-tuning, but gave it up early in the season when they started throwing sharp curveballs and changeups.

J.T. Snow, Todd Hundley and Orlando Merced are among those who gave up on switch-hitting in the midst of their careers. Even many superstars have expressed regret over not embracing switch-hitting, including Mike Schmidt, Frank Robinson, Rickey Henderson and home-run king Hank Aaron.

"If I knew exactly what I know now and had it to do over," Aaron told Jerry Brondfield in the book "Hank Aaron ... 714 and Beyond," "I'd be a switch-hitter. No telling what I could have done."

For those who can deal with the initial shock of feeling completely foreign at the plate, and are willing to work twice as hard on their batting stroke — because they now have two strokes to hone and polish — it can be career-saving. Or, like Wills, a career-making transformation.

"If I were the manager of a Little League team, if you didn't want to switch-hit, you could play for someone else," Bragan said. "That's how strongly I believe in it."

Longtime high-school coach Ben Lefebvre, who produced three switch-hitting sons in the pros, including major-league All-Star Jim Lefebvre, embodied Bragan's philosophy in 1985 at St. Bernard High School in Southern California.

Something of a switch-hitting guru, the senior Lefebvre in '85 converted every member on the St. Bernard team to switch-hitting.

"I've always believed in it," Lefebvre told the Los Angeles Times that year. "It makes you a much tougher hitter. They can't get you out of the lineup."

The advantages are both obvious and subtle. Since the vast majority of switch-hitters are natural right-handers, they get to move a good step or two closer to first base. That's the main reason teams have historically looked at speedy but bat-challenged righties as candidates to switch to switching.

Becoming a switch-hitter is also an excellent way to raise one's chances of playing every day, by removing the platoon rationale from the manager. Dave Hollins saw his left-handed-hitting older brother, Paul, benched against left-handed pitchers while in the minor leagues, and immediately took up switch-hitting as a teenager.

"That's why I started. And that was the only reason that I was able to play every day," Hollins told the Buffalo News in 2001.

The biggest advantage, however, is visual. When a right-hander pitches to a right-hander, or a lefty to a lefty, the curveball is liable to start at his head, forcing the batter to hold his ground on the faith that the ball will break over the plate.

Not all hitters can hang in, and for those that can't, switch-hitting ensures that the off-speed pitches are always breaking inward.

"The reason I became a switch-hitter is that I didn't like facing right-handers from the right side," said White Sox coach Tim Raines, who won a batting title in 1986 and collected 2,605 career hits after learning to hit left-handed early in his pro career.

"The ball was always breaking to me instead of breaking away from me. I always enjoyed that part."

So did Wills, who said, "If there's any fear in baseball, it's one area: Getting hit in the head. ... the curveball has made a lot of players go into another endeavor."

Some switch-hitters were seemingly born to the task, like Pete Rose, who learned at age 9. Rose, who collected a record 4,256 hits, has said that he can't remember batting right-handed against a right-handed pitcher in his entire life.

Dr. Rommie Maxey, a switch-hitting connoisseur who operates the Web site switchhitting.com and has produced a book and instruction video on the subject, believes the earlier the conversion is made, the better.

"Obviously, if you get a young person in the development years, you have the opportunity to create habits, rather than change habits," said the Houston-based Maxey, a former coach and athletic director.

"I have some young people doing it now at ages 4, 5 and 6. You're not even considering the idea of a curve at that age, or the effect."

The legend of Mickey Mantle is a staple of baseball history — how his father, Mutt Mantle, and grandfather Charles Mantle, both semipro players, made Mickey a switch-hitter in Commerce, Okla. Mantle described the process in his autobiography, "The Mick":

"Dad would pitch me right-handed and I'd bat lefty; Grandpa pitched lefty and I'd bat righty. That's how they taught me to switch-hit. Every once in a while, I would hit one over the house. Often as not, the next pitch would knock me down."

Mantle is probably the most influential figure in switch-hitting history, his prowess prompting a generation of imitators.

Among the subsequent switch-hitters who directly credit Mantle with learning the craft — usually at the behest of a Mantle-worshiping father — are Ken Singleton, Tony Clark, Carlos Baerga, Chipper Jones and Bobby Kielty. That's far from an inclusive list.

Though a scattering of superb switch-hitters existed before Mantle, such as George Clark in the 19th century, Frankie Frisch in the 1920s and '30s, and Cool Papa Bell in the Negro Leagues in the same time period, there were only 34 two-way hitters on major-league 40-man rosters when Mantle retired in 1969.

But that was up from a mere eight in 1952, Mantle's second season — just 2.5 percent of all non-pitchers.

The advent of Astroturf in the 1960s led to a proliferation of slap-hitting switch-hitters, personified by Willie Wilson, Willie McGee and Vince Coleman. Their game was to chop the ball off the turf or line it into the gap, and start running. By 1992, the percentage of switch-hitters rose to 17.2.

As of Friday, there were 93 switch-hitters on major-league 40-man rosters, less than 15 percent of all non-pitchers. That ranged from a high of six on the Giants, Dodgers and Angels, to none on the Brewers.

The Mariners have just one switch-hitter, Carl Everett, who once said he has hit both ways "since I came out of my mother's womb."

Not surprisingly, in today's power-driven game, many of the best contemporary switch-hitters are closer in style to Mantle than Rose.

That includes such boppers as Mark Teixeira of Texas (43 homers and 144 runs batted in last year, the latter total breaking George Davis' 109-year-old record for a switch-hitter), Lance Berkman of Houston (42 homers and 128 RBI in 2002) and Chipper Jones of Atlanta (six seasons with 30 or more homers, eight with 100 or more RBI, and a .304 career average — plus the distinction of using a white bat from the left side, and a black bat from the right side).

Berkman's story is reminiscent of Mantle. His father, attorney Larry Berkman, had Lance alternate left- and right-handed at-bats in Little League, regardless of the pitcher.

When Lance was 6, Larry set up a batting tee in the garage and attached a tire to a tree in the backyard of their home in Austin. Every day, Lance took 50 swings from one side of the plate and 50 swings from the other.

"My dad sort of pre-programmed me to be a baseball player," Berkman told The Seattle Times in 2002.

It's safe to say there has never been a more bountiful crop of switch-hitting catchers than exists today. The group includes Jorge Posada, Victor Martinez, Johnny Estrada and Jason Varitek.

Tom Tresh, a successful switch-hitter from the '60s — Mantle's Yankees teammate during most of that time — has often wondered if switch-hitting is really as big an advantage as it appears, because of the inherent difficulty in maintaining a groove from both sides of the plate.

"It's really two different ways to hit," said Tresh, 68 and living in Florida. "When I played, we didn't get to have extra batting practice like they do today. You had two different ways to hit, and the same amount of time to practice as everyone else. You can't really say if you'd have done better just concentrating on your stronger side."

Ultimately, Tresh concluded, "I'd probably do it all again based on the knowledge I had then. My dad [Mike Tresh] was a major-league catcher, and Mickey was his idol. He saw the advantage of swinging both ways. It's not easy, though."

That difficulty is readily apparent to those who make the conversion, especially as a pro. The Angels' Chone Figgins was turned into a switch-hitter shortly after signing with the Colorado Rockies in 1997.

"I didn't even take batting practice," Figgins recalled during a recent game at Safeco Field. "They just threw me in there. The first time I ever hit left-handed was in a game. I think I struck out. I was about 0 for 30 to start out."

Eventually, however, it became, if not second nature to Figgins, at least comfortable enough for him to begin forging a successful switch-hitting career. For the past three years, in fact, he has been a .302 hitter from the left side — 27 points higher than from his natural side.

"The way it's played out, it's been real good for me," he said. "It's just a lot of work to put in just to keep up with both sides, because obviously, you have a different swing from each side of the plate."

Angels coach Alfredo Griffin was playing Class A ball for San Jose in Lodi, Calif., when his manager, Gomer Hodge, decided the weak-hitting Griffin could benefit from a switch.

"The way he did it was just crazy," recalled Griffin. "I didn't practice or anything. During a ballgame, he said, 'You're going to hit left-handed next at-bat.' Without any preparation. I hit a ground ball to shortstop, almost beat it out. So he said, 'You're staying,' and at that point, I started practicing."

Said Griffin, who became an All-Star and played 18 seasons: "I don't think I would have made the majors without it, because right-handed, I was a really weak hitter."

Julio Cruz is another player who was told, after he signed with the Angels' organization, to start hitting left-handed. Early in his conversion, he struggled mightily.

"I went according to the pitcher in the beginning," he recalled. "If I thought the pitcher was tough, I'd bat right-handed. If I thought I could probably make some contact — contact, not get a hit — I'd go left-handed.

"There were some times in a game I'd just go back and forth because I had no clue what to do. The toughest part was the ball being thrown at you. I had nowhere to go. I got hit in the numbers, busted ribs. I took it personally after a while."

The first time he stood as a left-handed hitter, Cruz said, "I had no clue. They took me to the batting cage and just started soft-tossing. I had no idea how to even swing. It hadn't gotten to my brain yet. My coordination was way off.

"It took me a good three, four years before I finally realized, 'Oh, I can step into the ball. Oh, I can pull it every once in a while, with a runner on second and nobody out. I can actually roll my wrist over and pull the ball.' "

Looking back at his 10-year career, Cruz said, "Switch-hitting got me to the big leagues much quicker. The fact I could run a little bit and just chop, chop, chop on the Astroturf."

Ozzie Smith's path to a Hall of Fame career was jump-started when his college coach at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Berdy Harr, turned Smith into a switch-hitter.

Maybe the most successful transformation ever was made by Eddie Murray, a Hall of Famer who rivals Mantle for power with 504 home runs, and also managed to bang out 3,255 hits.

Murray was slumping badly in 1975 at Class AA Asheville, a top prospect gone deathly cold, when his manager, Jimmie Schaffer, had the same inspiration that Bragan had with Wills some 17 years earlier.

"I said, 'Do you want to try something? Come out tomorrow and we'll talk about it. I want you to hit from the left side,' " said Schaffer, now 70 and retired in Pennsylvania.

"We talked and I said, 'You're not comfortable, are you?' He said, 'I feel terrible.' So I had him hit from the left side, and I was amazed. He started hitting line drives all over the place, swinging against me."

Though Orioles' officials went into a tizzy when they found out, Schaffer stuck with it, working virtually every day with the 19-year-old first baseman. Murray's first left-handed at-bat resulted in a hit — the first of thousands from the sinistral side.

The rest is switch-history. All because Murray had the good sense, when Schaffer put his hand on his shoulder, to be quiet and listen.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com.